The Real Deal New York

Trump ends infrastructure council

President Trump decided to abandon plans of forming an advisory council on infrastructure.

The move comes days after CEOs defected from Trump’s American Manufacturing Council and Strategic and Policy Forum in protest over his response to a violent neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville.

Trump had tapped developers Richard LeFrak and Steve Roth to head the council but had yet to announce further appointments, Bloomberg reported. At an April conference, LeFrak was vague in responding to the question of how much influence the council had. “That’s a good question,” he said. “Some of us do have the president’s ear from time to time, and so if that means the commission will have some authority, that’s the authority.”

The council’s intended mandate was to help oversee a planned $1 trillion in additional federal infrastructure investment.

“They’re pros,” Trump Told The Wall Street Journal in January. “That’s what they do. All their lives, they build. They build under budget, ahead of schedule.” [Bloomberg] — Konrad Putzier